Blitzlichter einer kreativen Gesellschaft

Paul Coehlo: “Don’t let your fears bite you”

Some encouraging words for all the bloggers out there who won’t really get rich by blogging but did find the tool to live their passion for expressing themselves. The man who is speaking here is someone who you would not naturally associate with being a heavy new media user. Paul Coelho– he seems to be on every web conference, at least the ones I attend, and watching him climbing up the stage yesterday, I asked myself why? Ok, he is kind of digital as he is blogging and publishing his books at the web. And he has this touchable aura as he throws an annual party for his “friends” – his readers. But aren’t there any other authors out there who do this as well? And shouldn’t it be the mission of a conference that claims to picture the digital future to come up with new amazing faces?
But after 20 minutes I find myself fascinated listening to his story: his tactic is doubtless responsible for the rise of some grey hair at the heads of his publisher. He must have gone crazy as Paul Coelho did install “The Alchemist” for free download on the web. And, people would go and download. Of course. But then the mystic happened. Coelho did not get a single comment on his webpage. Because, people would start reading online than go and buy the hard copy…and write him emails about their experiences while reading it. Seems like luck kissed the brave and print is not dead. Yeah!
But let’s make the point of this story: For me the real achievement of Coelho is that he brought the statement, the aim of every artist being to share his art, to a new (media) level. He kind of overcame a lot of fear by breaking down the traditional boundary between books and online content. Doing so he impressively proved that it is the content that counts.

And we can expect more to become: as the audience was asking for more artists to play around with applications and technologies such as twitter and doing so create new “arty” forms of those technologies. It is time for realization.